


Spare

by deathwailart



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: Children, Multi, Polyamory, Post-Canon, Renegade Commander Shepard, Threesome - F/F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-03
Updated: 2014-08-03
Packaged: 2018-02-11 15:07:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 747
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2072814
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deathwailart/pseuds/deathwailart
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The war might be over, Asteria might have her family but her daughters are growing up and learning about the choices she made.</p>
<p>Written for the 30 day drabble challenge: spare</p>
            </blockquote>





	Spare

Between Asteria and Javik, their girls are all shrewd, sharp little things, Andromeda five years older than Lyra. They've been taught that it's okay to be afraid but never to show it and given that Liara's the Shadow Broker, she's taught them every trick in the book already. Asteria lived through Mindoir and being alone in the dark, the refugee camp – that hit hard back on the Citadel, a sick panic as she confronted memories long since buried – and foster placements that never worked out. Because she screamed in the night. Because sometimes the panic meant she couldn't speak, couldn't do anything, lay in bed or threw up, locked the doors and refused to let anyone in because it was happening again, the batarians were coming with their flamethrowers. Her biotics manifested with headaches and sometimes fits close to seizures and no one wanted a girl like that. Bounced around in the system until she was old enough to sign up. Real amps, real food, people who gave her the sort of structure she needed and the soldier who'd wrapped her in a jacket the day she'd been lifted off Mindoir had ended up as a mentor.  
  
She still flinches around anyone who can incinerate enemy armour and this house doesn't have a fireplace even though Liara wanted one.  
  
People like Asteria Shepard aren't supposed to have a life like this. Either because people think she's some sort of monster when she's not, she's just about getting the job done and that doesn't mean she doesn't love people because she does. She did all that she did so her daughters would have a safe place to grow up. Or because people think that she's some sort of criminal who wouldn't want a life. It's all she's wanted and if she could have traded everything so she could have grown up with her family on Mindoir then she would've done it in a heartbeat.  
  
Not now though. Not when she has Liara and Javik, Andromeda and Lyra, not when they're discussing maybe having another one because Lyra is five now and wouldn't it be nice, another little blue girl to run around the house? After all, Asteria is mostly retired these days, only really called in when the Council or Alliance feel the need to scare the living shit out of someone. She's a housewife and loves it really, living on Ilium now the rebuilding is done because it's a good base of operations for Liara and Javik doesn't honestly seem to care where he lives as he sometimes writes that damn book with Liara or lays the foundations of a new Prothean empire via the girls.  
  
"Dad?" Andromeda's voice rouses her from her daydream and she turns, smiling and holding out a hand to her eldest who's still small – asari aging is strange, her mind developing fast but she's so little still and Asteria loves her – who takes it and hops up onto her father's lap. "Can I ask you something?"  
  
"You can ask me anything," she replies, supporting her daughter as she turns in her lap so they're face to face, Asteria's arms holding her steady.  
  
"Did you really have a chance to save the geth?"  
  
Asteria sighs because it's unavoidable that the past gets brought up all the time, her deeds, her reputation because the girls are growing up and they're the daughters of the first human spectre, the last living prothean and a prothean expert. "Where did you hear about it?" She asks because it's always better to know where they're getting the information from because she can find out how garbled it might have been.  
  
"Aunt Tali said something about it last time we talked on the vid when she was inviting us to Rannoch," Andromeda replies, reaching out to play with one of the drawstrings on Asteria's hoodie, wrapping it around one chubby blue finger.  
  
"Remember when I told you both about why you only have grandpa Aethyta?" She waits for Andromeda to nod and holds in the sigh. "See, you've got all your aunts and uncles but you should've had another uncle. Kaidan Alenko but because of the geth, I had to leave him behind."  
  
It's not the sort of story she imagined telling her daughter but maybe she's old enough to start hearing about why her mother is how she is. She makes the hard choices because she's never had an alternative but she's making damn sure her daughters will.


End file.
